THE VANCOUVER
Leni Riefenstahl is still working at craft
By DAVID RISING
Once dubbed a
"Nazi pin-up girl" by The Saturday Evening Post, Riefenstahl remains
unrepentant about her work for Hitler, saying her films portraying Nazi Germany
were about art, not propaganda or ideology.
Speaking to The
Associated Press by telephone from her home near Munich ,
she dismissed the notion, prevalent in Germany , that she should apologize
for helping to glorify Hitler and the Nazi party. Instead, she emphasized the
prizes she received for them.
"I don't know
what I should apologize for," Riefenstahl said. "I cannot apologize,
for example, for having made the film Triumph of the Will. It won the top
prize. All my films won the top prize."
In Triumph of the
Will, a critically acclaimed documentary, Riefenstahl employed a crew of 120
with 40 cameras to put together mesmerizing montages of goose-stepping soldiers
in torchlight parades, endless rows of swastikas, and close-ups of Hitler and
other Nazi leaders speaking to a dazzled German public.
Riefenstahl admits
it was used to sell National Socialism, but says that was not her intent.
"One can use
it for propaganda, but in and of itself it is no propaganda film — it has
absolutely no commentary. . . . There is not one single anti-Semitic word in my
film," she said.
One of
Riefenstahl's biographers, Rainer Rother, called her view simplistic.
"I think she
might not have been an anti-Semitic woman, but she still was aware of what was
going on," said Rother, whose book Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of
Talent is being released in English this month to coincide with her birthday.
"National
Socialism means at least you don't say no to anti-Semitism — that's something
she must have known at the time and calculated."
Despite her age and
poor health due to injuries sustained in accidents — including a helicopter
crash in Sudan in 2000 — Riefenstahl is still working and physically active —
diving for three weeks in March in the Maldives.
She is also about
to release her first film in nearly half a century. A 45-minute documentary cut
from footage shot during dives in the Indian Ocean
between 1974 and 2000, Impressions under Water will be broadcast on German
television later this month in honour of her birth-day.
So powerful were
the images in Triumph of the Will and her documentary of the 1936 Berlin
Olympics, Olympia ,
that Riefenstahl was unable to escape their stigma after the war. She turned to
still photography, but still faced criticism that she promoted a Nazi esthetic
of the Uebermensch, or superman, in particular in her photos of sculpted
African tribesmen.
Born Helene Bertha
Amalie Riefenstahl in Berlin
in 1902, Riefenstahl was a dancer until she sustained a knee injury. In 1926,
she debuted as an actress in the derring-do movie The Sacred Mountain — one of
director Arnold Fanck's many alpine films emphasizing athleticism.
After several more
movies, she made her directorial debut in 1932 with The Blue Light, in which
she also starred. While her documentaries have won the most praise, it is this
metaphorical film that is Riefenstahl's favourite.
"The action,
the story and also the reproduction of the film make it particularly beautiful
and picturesque," she said.
The same year that
The Blue Light was released, Riefenstahl heard Hitler speak at a Berlin rally and offered
her services as a filmmaker. "He had everyone under a spell," she
later said.
She provided the
Nazis with a medium that transcended borders, Rother said.
"She never was
a true believer, but she had a unique opportunity. No one else at that time
could command such a lot of cameramen and the support of the party and state
for the rallies. She used, in a way, the system for a work of art but also
served the ideology. There's no doubt the party rally films are carefully
constructed to support the party message."
